The PocketSurfer2 is touted as a mobile browsing device, serving up the “real” web anywhere there’s mobile phone reception. Essentially, it’s a widescreen PDA with an integrated SIM card; you can’t use it for voice calls or text messages, but it offers always-on GPRS for internet browsing.

Included in the price is a year’s access, at a maximum of 20 hours per month. After that you’ll need to pay another $50 to keep it going for a further year. Despite using Vodafone’s network Datawind itself acts as a virtual ISP so there’s no hassle with contracts. But it also means you’re reliant on Datawind to keep its servers going – without them the PocketSurfer2 is useless. The plus side is that Datawind processes the websites you request, compressing them before they’re sent to the device. In practice, this means regularly used websites download faster on the PocketSurfer2 than on other GPRS devices.

You get a satisfyingly weighty device for your cash, but the PocketSurfer2’s hard plastic feels fairly brittle and we can’t see it surviving many long drops onto hard surfaces. It’s reasonably good-looking, though: flip open the screen and you’re greeted with a full QWERTY keyboard, similar in looks to the Motorola RAZR’s keypad. But there’s virtually no travel on any of the keys, and getting up to speed while typing emails is virtually impossible. What’s more, the width of the keyboard makes it hard to reach the centre keys with your thumbs if you’re holding the PocketSurfer2 by its sides. The only other physical features are two hinged rubber flaps. One opens to reveal the mini-USB port used to charge the device, but the other hides nothing but blank plastic: Datawind suggests future versions might have a memory card reader.

Once the PocketSurfer2 is turned on, the operating system is all but hidden. The main menu is simply a website loaded from Datawind’s US servers, which presents several options, including search, news, email, word processing and instant messaging. Each one of these simply redirects to an appropriate third-party web service. Selecting word processing, for instance, takes you to an online document editor.

A header is persistent at the top of the screen and occupies about 10% of the vertical space. Unfortunately, it’s used only for battery and signal-strength indicators and a large PocketSurfer logo. As a result of this, and the constraining 640 x 240 resolution, you’ll find scrolling vertically when reading websites a constant hassle. It’s possible to zoom both in and out, of course, but this is no more convenient. Even worse, scrolling left and right means you have to move the mouse cursor with the arrow keys all the way to the extremity of the screen, so all the way to the right to scroll right and vice versa. This swiftly becomes frustrating, particularly if you’re on a site with text that wraps – moving the page directly with the arrow keys would make much more sense. Mouse control is a further problem: the pointer jumps a few pixels with each arrow press, occasionally making it hard to select links.

The final problem is the screen. It’s a colour unit, but colours are so poorly reproduced that you’ll never find yourself idly browsing Flickr in a spare moment. We also found a disappointing amount of vertical banding. It’s reasonably bright, but simply doesn’t come close to the quality available from smartphones such as the HTC TyTN II.

In use, we squeezed about four hours of browsing from the PocketSurfer2 before the battery gave out, which for most people will mean around two days’ use between charges. However, the software and hardware combination are hard to recommend. The PocketSurfer has made a brave attempt at a web-based operating system, but there are simply too many limitations in comparison to Windows Mobile 6. And it’s easily beaten when it comes to viewing websites on the hoof – Safari on Apple’s iPod touch makes a much better fist of displaying websites as they would actually look on a desktop PC.

If you have access to a good range of Wi-Fi hotspots, then the iPod touch is only slightly more expensive, but it has calendar and contact applications and can play YouTube videos. If you’re further away from hotspots, a smartphone with an unlimited data plan will offer a better surfing experience, as well as allowing phone calls – those tempted by the PocketSurfer2 would do well to consider the HTC TyTN II instead.

The PocketSurfer2 proved useful on occasion – glancing at a Wikipedia entry on the bus or looking at Google Maps when lost on the way to an address – but it just isn’t polished enough and it’s priced too high.